UT College of Law joins ICM to provide conflict management education for UT law students

The University of Tennessee College of Law and Lipscomb University Institute of Conflict Management (ICM) have entered into a collaborative agreement to provide graduate level instruction in conflict management and dispute resolution.

 

The collaboration between Lipscomb and the law school’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution allows UT law students to earn a master’s degree in conflict management from Lipscomb at the same time they are earning their Juris Doctor from UT Law. Lipscomb will offer the courses beginning September 2009 at UT’s Knoxville campus on Fridays and Saturdays.

 

 

 

Although the College of Law currently provides courses for law students in negotiation, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution, the collaboration will allow students, graduates, and other executives and professionals to take advanced courses in these subjects as well as arbitration, system design, facilitation and public policy formation.

 

Professor Penny White, Director of UT’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, said the collaboration gives law students an opportunity to augment their legal education with advanced conflict management courses that will enable them to better serve some clients. “This meshes well with our current offerings and gives the law school a special niche in an emerging field,” White said.

 

“UT Law has long been recognized for its clinical education model,” said Larry Bridgesmith, executive director of Lipscomb’s ICM. “Our institute shares that commitment to bring ‘theory into practice,’ and we are excited to extend our unique interactive style of teaching dispute resolution to UT Law students, alumni and others in East Tennessee who wish to enhance their problem-solving skills, learn mediation techniques and improve negotiation outcomes in business, law and organizational endeavors.”

 

The Institute for Conflict Management was established in 2006 by Lipscomb President L. Randolph Lowry, who is internationally recognized as a leader in dispute resolution education. The ICM has become the Mid-South region’s foremost authority and purveyor of resources and skills to minimize the costs of unresolved conflict in a variety of fields including education, law, healthcare and faith-based settings. The institute draws its faculty from across the nation to offer innovative graduate courses and professional mediation training, and has served hundreds of students, lawyers, managers and judges.

 

“The future of law, business and community building will be shaped by those who are skilled problem solvers.  This new collaboration between ICM and the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution at UT Law provides the skills and the credentials to help leaders in all fields of endeavor take their place in the front ranks of those shaping that future,” said Bridgesmith.